Series 4/Chapter 2: INSIDE THE ASYLUM

The smell inside the halls was of human waste and garbage. The little Caleb and Kat knew about Windcliff Sanitarium was exposed by the conditions of the hospital and it's staff, especially the off-putting chief of staff Dr. Joanna Grayson, who's personality was as cold and ridged as the rocks that clung to the side of Widow's Hill.

The yellow walls felt like they had never been cleaned, the sticky linoleum floor grabbed on to the bottom of shoes and made a sticky ripping sound as each foot pulled itself free from the floor, a feeling Caleb and Kat were very uncomfortable with. She grabbed on to his hand as they stood at the nurses station listening to the sounds of feet unlatching from the stickiness all around them.

They came to Windcliff on a hunch that Caleb's father, David Collins, had been at the hospital sometime around 1996, when David mailed a letter from a private zip code from within the hospital's campus. And now, they were there for answers.

"Dr. Grayson, these two are here to see ya." Said a snarky nurse with her Boston accident as she took paperwork from Joanna was signing at the station and scratched her scalp with the end of a pen.

"What can I do for you?" Joanna asked, noting a familiar resemblance in Caleb.

"About two decades ago my father disappeared and just recently we found a clue to his whereabouts. I received a letter from him that came from this hospital. Can you tell me when he left? We're trying to track him. His name is David Collins." Caleb asked, assuming his father couldn't possibly still be at the hospital 20 years later.

Joanna's eyes seemed to almost pop out of her head when she heard the last name, and realized the resemblance. Instantly she knew that she had to make sure no one knew where David was until the right moment; until she was ready to pounce on the goldmine that was the Collins family and their fascinating connection to the world of the supernatural and psychotic, all the things David mentioned of his life inside the walls of Collinwood.

"Unfortunately, I am unable to give you any information about our patients here. Under absolutely no circumstances." Joanna said bluntly.

"But you can tell us if he was here once, can't you?" Kat asked.

Joanna paused and licked her lips, the dishonestly dried out her mouth so much it was like she had been licking stamps all afternoon. "Mr. Collins might have had a history with this establishment. But that's all I can tell you. Details of whether or not he was here are under the strictest doctor/patient confidentiality." She quipped.

"But, Doctor, you have to understand, I'm his son, I should be able to know where he went after he--" Caleb said before he was interrupted by his detective girlfriend

"Unless he's still here!" Kat said abruptly. "If David is still a patient here then of course you wouldn't be able to talk about him, he's still your patient."

"I'm going to have to ask you to leave. As you can see we're a very busy facility and there are lots of patients we need to tend to ." Joanna said abruptly as she gathered papers on the Nurse's station.

"You can't tell his own son if he's still your patient? That's absurd. I have a right to know if my father is still seeking your help here at Windcliff." Caleb shouted.

As Caleb argued his point, patients began to hear the commotion and started to walk out of their rooms and into the halls in night gowns, cautiously making their way closer and closer to the talking.

Some seemed to have never been washed, other's seemed to just stare at the walls. As soon as they noticed Caleb start to get animated and demand any sort of answer from Dr. Grayson they all started to crowd into the nurses station, like moths to a flame. Where there was any kind of commotion or chaos they would gather.

"Mr. Collins I am going to have to ask you to keep your voice down." Joanna said in a sort of half whisper noticing the patients dragging their feet, just a short distance now from them.

"I want to know!" Caleb shouted again.

"I WANT TO KNOW!!" One patient mimicked.

"I WANT TO KNOW! I WANT TO KNOW!" Another mimicked louder then laughing an evil laugh.

Kat scooted closer to Caleb and wrapped her arm around his, keeping an eye on the enclosing patients as they all sent menacing glares her way, like tigers pacing and circling their prey.

"That is information I cannot give you, now if you kindly leave. Your presence is upsetting the mood of my patients and I cannot have any kind of out bursts." Joanna said.

A female patient in her 70s walked over to Kat and plucked at her hair, staring at it with a sort of nostalgia and saddness mixed with jealousy and rage. She then got very close and primped her own hair; red with white roots.

"You look familiar. Like a movie star. Are you a movie star. Do you make movies. I was a movie star. I made movies. Do you like me? I was a movie star. I made movies." she said in Kat's ear.

"You're lovely.............I HATE LOVELY!!!" Another patient screamed at Kat.

"I WANT TO KNOW!!!" Screamed a fourth patient again from a corner, still mimicking Caleb.

Caleb and Kat begin to feel nervous with everyone floating around them, it was beginning to feel dangerous being there especially not knowing what was really happening and if they were safe.

Joanna grabbed a phone and called for some hospital orderlies to come and take the patients back to their rooms and Caleb grabbed Kat's hand and they begin to leave. And just as they did, Kat turned and in a split second saw someone peek their head out from Joanna's office door then hid again when they noticed that Kat saw them.

The face Kat saw was a blur to her, but in a way she felt she recognized it. But Caleb pulled her along trying to get them safely outside before she could see that it was her own brother Sebastian hiding David in Joanna's Windcliff office.

They made their way down the long, stinking corridor to the front entrance. The nurses station, Dr. Grayson, and the rowdy patients all behind them. Except  there was patient, an older woman, thin and frail, dressed in robe that had embroidered letters on the lapel: M.E. She  popped out of a corner doorway and grabbed Caleb by the arm. Her eyes, seemed tired but lively, big and brown exuuding a sense of kindness that Caleb did not see in the other patients.

"Inside this place ........he's here. Your father is here." The woman said.

And just as quickly as she grabbed Caleb, the older woman, with dark hair and wisps of white roots dashed off down the corridor back into the chaos of the Windcliff.

 Caleb and Kat burst through the entrance and dashed off into their car parked under a giant willow.

"What the hell was that?" Caleb said relieved that they were now safe in their car.

"It's not over. She's hiding something." Kat said sternly. "That other patient said he's there. And I believe her."

"But what do we do? She wont tell us anything." Caleb asked.

Kat looked at Caleb, her glance was one that he had seen before, but he couldn't exactly know what she was thinking, all he could tell was that she had a plan.


Back inside Windcliff, the patients had all been cleared from the hall way and Joanna was back in her office with Sebastian, both feeling a sense of relief themselves.

"How did they find him?" Joanna said angrily.

"I don't know! I heard Caleb say he got a letter from David years ago from here. Is that true?" Sebastian asked.

"It could be. If it was sent in the first weeks that he was here it's possible he was lucid enough to have sent Caleb a letter. But why would they come looking for him now, after all these years? We're not ready to put the plan in motion yet. Nothing is ready!" Joanna said pounding her fist on her desk in frustration.

"What do you want to do?" Sebastian asked.

Joanna looked at Sebastian but said no words, all she did was pick up the phone and dial. The phone rang once, then twice, then three times but there was no answer. Just a voice mail beep, allowing Joanna to leave a message for the person she called:

"This is Dr. Joanna Grayson. I understand it's been quite sometime since we have had contact with each other, and I can understand if you would wish that I had never called, but the moment we wished never happened, has happened. I need your help. David has been discovered. You can call me back here at your convenience." Joanna said before hanging up.

And inside his small little hospital room cell attached to Joanna's office, David listened but could do nothing. All he could do was sit by the door and hope that for one second Joanna and Sebastian would be off their guard and he could escape. His sat there, his back up against the door, his arms tucked between his legs and thighs, his eyes starting at his bare feet. All he needed one a second, just one second, and he could free himself. It was his last hope of freedom, and it could possible come with a little help from someone with the initials M.E.

***COLLINWOOD***

While Caleb and Kat were away in Bangor searching for David, Collinwood was uncharacteristically calm. Most of the residents took to their respectful rooms and rested, read, or chatted quietly. Since Leopold's death, the quiet seemed to come. Or was this the quiet before the storm?

Kimberly, however, had a lot of work to do in her laboratory. Not only was she working on a blood research and therapy for Barnabas but her son Christopher also needed tests done to see if Barnabas' experiment on him had worked: Had all of Chris mutated genes reverted back to normal as Barnabas promised after drinking Leopold's blood?

Barnabas, even Claudia, had known that werewolves who kill vampires, like Chris did Leopold, would be free from the moon curse, but no one knew for sure, and Kim had painstakingly stayed up for two nights testing Chris tissue samples.

As she worked, Chris and Claudia came in to see if the results were ready. They were hand in hand, nervous and hoping for the best. Claudia, now void of any supernatural powers after using a final spell on fellow witch (her mother Angelique), was hoping that Chris too would be free of his curse, and they would be free to live normal lives together, forever. 

"How's it going?" Chris asked his scientist mother apprehensively.

"I should get results soon. How are you feeling?" Kimberly asked her son.

"I feel fine, but I dont feel different. I mean, I dont even know if I'm supposed to feel different. I've never not felt this way." Christopher said noting that all his life he's been used as a test subject; Kimberly's test subject. 

"I saw Leopold's blood all him the other night. It had to have worked." Claudia noted.

"What happens if I'm still this way? What will we do?" Chris asked.

"You won't be. This has to work." Claudia mentioned.

"But.....if by chance something went wrong and there wasn't enough blood to go into your system, we'll figure something else out. We'll do something different. Some how, we'll get this fixed Christopher, I promise you." Kimberly said.

Then finally, the tests were ready and Kimberly walked over to the table where the results were being sorted through blood tests and vials all scanning and searching for traces of werewolf DNA that had been genetically inserted into Christopher when he was a baby, altering his genes to mimic those of a wolf when the moon touched his skin. 

Kimberly scanned the blood again, and printed them out for her to read. She carefully went over the tests, reading them twice to make sure what she was reading was definitive and correct. 

She removed her glasses and walked over to Chris and Claudia with a glum face.

"I'm sorry. It didn't work. There are no signs that Leopold's blood effected you. The DNA mutations that we created and placed in your cells as a baby are still present." Kimberly said to a shocked Christopher.

"How??? How can this have happened?" Claudia said equally as shocked. 

"There may have not been enough blood to go into Christopher, after all he was interrupted by Carolyn when she scared him off." Kimberly explained.

"So I killed someone I barley even knew for nothing. Barnabas had me murder someone for nothing!!" Christopher screamed.

"No! Not for nothing! Chris, Leopold was dangerous and could have done so much more damage to us had you not listened to Barnabas' plan. You did the right thing." Kimberly explained.

"This is insane. I should have never listened to you, I should never listened to Barnabas!" Christopher said with tears in his eyes.

"There was no other way to ..." Kim said as she was interrupted by Chris.

"NO! Stop. I don't want to hear anymore. I was supposed to be cured. I was supposed to be free, and now I'm exactly in the same place I was before any of this ever happened. What's worse is that I've killed two people now. I can't keep doing this." Chris said in an emotional break.

"There has to be another way Kimberly." Claudia said tears welling up in her eyes.

"We have to find my notes from when Chris was just a baby. Those notes have the recipe for the serum that will cure him. Without them, I don't know what we could do." Kimberly said.

"What about Barnabas. What if we used his blood." Chris asked. "He's just like Leopold. What if we used him."

"Chris what are you asking me?" Kimberly questioned even know she knew what he was asking.

"If it was a good enough plan to kill Leopold on a full moon so that I could use his blood to cure me, then why couldn't we try it with Barnabas?" Christopher asked nonchalantly indicating another death.

"Chris you can't do that." Claudia said shocked at Chris' notion.

"Why not? What does Barnabas have over everyone here? He's just as cruel as Leopold was." He answered.

"He's my father, Chris." Claudia answered back.

"And Leopold was Alex's dad.... at one point. But no one stopped to think about that." Chris snarled.

"We don't have to go to those extremes. I have tested Barnabas' blood here in the lab. The amount of vials I have here aren't enough to cure you, but we can try and collect more." Kimberly explained.

"Then get more." Christopher said in a deep angry voice. "You made me this way, now you figure out a way to get more blood out of Barnabas to cure me. Either you do it, or I do it, but trust me, you wouldn't want me to get Barnabas' blood my way. So figure it out." Chis added as he grabbed Claudia's hand.

Kimberly was left in her laboratory in a very hard predicament. She had to figure out how to get blood out of Barnabas, enough in quantity to cure Chris and still keep Barnabas alive. She knew she had to do it, she knew she had to make sure she made things right for her son, especially since she was responsible for making him  the creature that he hated. In Kim's eyes, Chris had to be made whole again, no mater what.

Kimberly took a deep breath and went back to her work on Barnabas' blood samples with no resolution in site for his own ailments. A cure for his curse for craving of human blood was no closer to being solved.

Kim  toiled away analogizing side after slide and as she did, over in a darkened corner of the lab, sitting deep in side a lab coat pocket was Kim's cell phone. Blinking a reminder message that Kim had missed a phone call and had a voice mail waiting for her to listen to... from Windcliff Sanitarium.